Or Hitler’s secret Kreigsmarine hover craft and flying saucers. He of course could have taken the good Aryans of Britain in a matter of days. He decided however to just use his regular panzers against the Bolsheviks to graciously save humanity against the Red Horde, then promptly forget where they kept the flying saucers…
I can see the ignorance level has not changed here; good thing I don’t waste my time with this site anymore.
You just did.
Egregiously so.
Why wait a year ? Well, simply, because Germany was nowhere near ready to attack the Soviet Union in 1940. It is easy to forget that the Polish and Western campaigns of 1939-'40 were, at one level, a learning experience for all concerned. In spite of their successes, the lessons learned for the Germans were costly. Even Poland made it obvious that German equipment was sometimes less than ideal. In particular, the preponderance of light tanks, many with little or no tank-on-tank capacity, was clearly exposed as a weakness. Quite heavy losses were suffered by the panzers at the hands of Polish artillery, and the vulnerability of the light tanks even to cannon-armed Polish tankettes would have come as an unpleasant surprise.
The set piece of the Western campaigns - the attack on Belgium, France and the Netherlands, yielded further expensive lessons. Light tanks (PzKpfw I and II, and PzKpfw 35t and 38t) still dominated the panzer forces. The disastrous performance of the French command and communications (which were centrally important for the Allied response) are widely noted; at the same time, the performance of French, Belgian and Dutch troops on the ground was patchy, but could locally be very impressive. Where the panzers met determined resistance from French Somua and “B” class tanks, their deficiencies were seriously exposed. These vehicles could mix it with the best German tanks. In particular, in those rare instances where “B” class tanks offered determined resistance, the panzers faced severe difficulties. No German tank could knock out a thickly armoured “B” tank except by shooting away their vulnerable tracks, and the “Bs” and Somuas made easy meat of the German light tanks, as noted by German commanders. The presence of one or two PzKpfw IVs, with their reasonable armour and relatively effective 75mm guns, was regarded even by Guderian as “comforting” when the more effective French tanks were encountered. French, Belgian and Dutch antitank units and infantry also proved capable against the panzers where they did resist. Apart from a number of instances in France, the Germans suffered at least one thought-provoking engagement in the Netherlands, where elements of the relatively lightly equipped and inexperienced 9th Panzer Division lost over 20 tanks to Dutch infantry and antitank units in a one-day action at Dordrecht. The shock to German nerves administered by this incident may have influenced the subsequent calamitous screw-up at Rotterdam.
[sorry - not finished last post; system problem prevented]
The result of all this was that the all-conquering panzers actually suffered heavy casualties in France and the Low Countries, as did élite infantry units such as the “Grossdeutschland” regiment, which were required to bear the burden of much of the fighting against the more determined French infantry units. Finally, the postscript to the Battle of France, the Battle of Britain - apart from occasioning significant losses to the Luftwaffe for the first time - also revealed weaknesses in that arm of the Wehrmacht. The suspected weaknesses of the lightly armed Dornier 17 bombers were confirmed; the extreme vulnerability of German dive bombers to effective fighter and anti-aircraft resistance was revealed; and the very limited effectiveness of the Luftwaffe’s fighter élite, the Me-110 “destroyer” squadrons, against modern single-engine fighters was revealed.
In sum, the Wehrmacht emerged from their early victories in a surprisingly battered condition, with serious losses to make up, and serious lessons to learn and implement, before it could reasonably contemplate another major campaign. The one-year delay was not nearly enough to do this, so that (thanks to Hitler), the Germans attacked the Soviet Union in a barely sufficient state of readiness, still depending to a large extent on obsolete light tanks, vulnerable aircraft and frontline combat units still working to recover from their losses in earlier campaigns. The huge tactical superiority of the Germans over the Soviets at this time allowed them to stay in the game in 1941-'42; an attack in late-1940 would by contrast have involved unacceptable risk, even allowing for obvious Soviet deficiencies. Best regards, JR.
Yes, but the other side of that coin is simply: hubris.
Hitler and Co thought they were on a roll, and they pressed on.
And, but for the Italian distraction in Greece on the eve of the Soviet invasion, the Germans might have done rather better against the USSR, or at least advanced further before the winter.
The Japanese certainly suffered from hubris in early to mid 1942 when the ‘victory disease’ encouraged them to expand their original limits of expansion.
The people at the top making broad strategic decisions based on recent, and stunning, victories in Germany and Japan were essentially politicians / egoists / marginal (or full on) psychopaths rather than detached military analysts undertaking the coldly objective sort of analysis you’ve offered.
Which is in large part why they lost in the end, because they were faced largely by Allies who were more disposed to detached military analysis rather than hubris (with due allowance being made for Churchill’s periodic flights of fancy).
Simple just no. The area the country was surrounded by other countries. Eventually lacked resources and fit men. Top command chain was broken when the assassination attempts started…
Re: Could Germany have won the war?
What does Nazi Germany do when the Western Allies (more specifically the United States) starts dropping Atomic Bombs? The German Atomic Bomb program for various reasons was far behind that of the United States, any German successes would have to be done by conventional military means. If Germany was in good condition by the end of 1945, whether due to defeating Russia, defeating an Allied invasion, invading/conquering the island of Britain, etc, unless the United States is out of the war, sometime in 1945 there is going to be a few Atomic Bombs dropped on Germany. The Atomic bombs were being developed to be used on Germany and with the building of B-29 bombers (with the B-36 already in the works), the first Atomic Bomb will most likely reach Germany. What next? What does Germany/Hitler do?
Turn into radioactive fallout and spend the next 20 years gradually circling the globe and spreading himself over a wide area, of course.
Hitler dying in the Atomic Bomb blast is possible, but not likely. By this time frame of the war Hitler spent most of his time in the underground bunker (under the old Chancellery, I believe), and since the Atomic Bombs were air bursts, he might have been buried for a bit, but not vaporized. It was unlikely that the Atomic bombs being dropped were going to be ground bursts to throw out the necessary fallout of irradiated material to kill rescue personnel. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, long term exposure to the radiation associated with the initial blast would be a problem later in life, but not enough to stop people from getting in there to help. If Hitler did survive such an attack, his near messianic pull with Germany would only be amplified
Depends who their target was - if it was Hitler, they would certainly have been ground-burst fused. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fused as they were to maximise the damage over a wide area of highly inflammable city. That doesn’t really apply to Berlin - much less flammable, and the really critical targets are underground but only spread over a very small area.
Re atomic bombs over Germany - don’t forget that Germany has a distinct advantage when it comes to closing the Mineshaft Gap …
Yours from the War Room,
JR.
We can’t afford to have a mineshaft Gap !!
Whether Hitler survives such an attack will make a difference, but how does Nazi Germany respond in either case? If the Allies are across the Rhine and the Russian’s are at the Oder rivers, the Atomic bomb just completes the act of the defeat of Nazi Germany. What if Nazi Germany still holds Western Europe and the Russians for what ever reason have been held out of Europe? Do Buzz bombs full of nerve gas start hitting London, does the Luftwaffe go practically suicidal to stop another bomb, does Germany go all out building the Trans-Atlantic capable rocket or do they follow Field Marshal von Rundstedt’s advice and “Make peace, you fools!”
“Buzz bombs” had long since been pushed out of range of targets in Britain
V2 were being used more against Antwerp than London.
Luftwaffe had not the means to do anything, if it committed its remaining aircraft in the air to stop allied bombers they would be destroyed just as well, allied tactics was to escort the bombers to engage the Luftwaffe in the air. Allied air superiority in aircrew and equipment meant the Axis forces had lost the air war.
Germany did not have the means to produce a trans atlantic rocket by 1944 - it could not even test one and it had no worthwhile payload - even aiming the relatively short distance from Holland to the UK with V2’s they had to aim for a big city to hit a target and even then large numbers missed.
The only thing I would add is that the Allies had Air Supremecy, not just Air Superiority. The tactics of directly attacking Luftwaffe fighters rather than waiting for them to come to the bombers was the final nail in the coffin of the Luftwaffe…
So you don’t think that the strategic bombing campaign did much to add to the Allies’ Air Supremacy, especially in the later stages of the war? If the Luftwaffe Commanders applied the strategic bombing thesis to British and French armaments factories, as the British RAF, the American Air Force and, to some extent, the Red Air Force applied to German armaments’ factories, would that have changed the situation? The researchers from the Strategic Bombing Survey came to the conclusion that the primary reason why the armaments industry continued its pace unabated was because Speer moved weapons production underground, telling us little about the effectiveness of strategic bombing.
Strategic bombing of armaments factories has useful effect only in a sustained conflict where the aim is to wear down the enemy’s ability to sustain the conflict by depriving him of resources to replace battle and related losses, or to build up forces and materiel for operations against the bombing nation.
France’s collapse was so rapid that attacks on its armaments factories would have had no impact in accelerating its defeat, and would have diverted German air forces from better tactical use in the German advance.
As for Britain, Germany lacked the heavy bombers which Britain and America used in their assaults on Germany. In 1940, when Germany had its best chance of defeating Britain in and from the air, in response to a characteristically aggressive Churchillian inspired raid on Berlin when all the odds were against Britain, Hitler made the stupid decision to divert his forces to bombing London, to no tactical or strategic advantage.
This ranks with the Japanese response to the tactically and strategically inconsequential Doolittle raid on Japan, which caused Japan to revise its policies and adopt a more defensive stance when America had no ability to repeat the raid in the near future.
Churchill’s and Doolittle’s raids against the odds are great examples of the impact which can be made by vigorous, if largely symbolic, aggression against an enemy which thinks it is invulnerable, and which changes the enemy’s strategic and or major tactical aims and or operations out of all proportion to the fragile assault.
The Luftwaffe mounted a campaign against the British Aircraft industry as well as one against RADAR. They were unsuccessful though, in the majority of case against aircraft factorys though due to the British setting up shadow factories - Supermarines works were destroyed in Sept 1940 - one raid damaged the factory and production was moved to shadow factories - just in time as it was totally destroyed a day later - at the time it was the sole factory producing Spitfires.
Many other aircraft factories and companys producing war material were attacked - at heavy loss to the Germans in many cases.
They tried to do what the allies were doing and did much more effectively later, but they lacked the equipment suitable for the task.
Relatively few factories were moved underground - more production was split up and assembly carried out centrally, there was slack in the German economy that Speer and his predecessor tightened up on,
The strategic bombing campaign was itself successful in a way, the main problem when enough tonnage could be dropped was the changing priority of the targets, just about to cripple an industry and the allies change target.